Read Online The Big Bite by Charles Williams - Free Book Online Page A

the restaurant, mostly hard hats and a truck driver or two. A blonde with a Georgia accent brought me some toast and a cup of coffee. I bought two packs of cigarettes and came back to the hotel. The square was still quiet except for the pigeons flapping around under the eaves of the courthouse.
    “Any better?” the brown-eyed man asked.
    “Not much,” I replied. I grabbed a couple of the paperbacked books off the stand and dropped fifty cents on the desk as I picked up the key. “Think I’ll stay in the sack for a while. Tell the maid just to pass up my room.”
    “Sure thing,” he said. Then he added, “We can get you a doctor, if you’d like.”
    “It’s not that bad,” I said. “Thanks just the same.”
    I went up to the room. Stripping down to my shorts because it was going to be hot, I slid the binoculars out of their case and put them on the carpet under the window. I placed an ash tray beside them, and a pack of cigarettes and some matches. I sat down on the floor and raised the blind about three inches. By putting my face up close I could see nearly all the square. There was practically no chance anybody down there would notice me; this side of the building would be shadow until noon. Who ever looked up at the second floor anyway?
    Hardly anything was moving yet. A bakery truck stopped before the café on the north side and a man went in carrying a tray of rolls. About halfway down the block on the south side a man on a stepladder was cleaning the windows of the J. C. Penney store. Yellow sunlight hit the gables of the courthouse, inched down the slopes of the red tile roof, and began to shatter in hot sprays of color against the third floor windows. The cool freshness of early morning was wilting a little. It was going to be a scorcher. I got up and turned on the fan, and brought a towel from the bathroom to mop the sweat from my face.
    I lit a cigarette, smoked it out to the end, and fired up another. Time went on. Sunlight was hitting the big plate glass window of the Cannon Motors showroom on the west side of the square now. A few cars were beginning to slide into the rows of angle parking spaces. I studied the drivers carefully as they got out and fished in their pockets for nickels for the meter and if they were big men I put the glasses on them. None of them resembled him at all. If they were tall enough they were thin, or if heavily built they were shorter or had sandy hair or long hair or damned little hair of any kind.
    I was growing uncomfortable. I shifted around, trying to stretch my legs. The gimp one ached a little; I looked at the scar tissue around the knee and cursed under my breath. The meat-headed, punchdrunk bastard— Who? Cannon? Mrs. Cannon? Or this big goon I thought I was looking for? I must have gravel in I head. What did I think I was proving with this Grade B movie routine? Just because some big guy had killed Purvis I’d strung together a chain of improbable coincidences and come up with a pearl necklace. What the hell—the chances were he’d never heard of Mrs. Cannon. He might be from Kokomo or Tucson, Arizona. He could be anybody. Maybe people were standing in line to kill Purvis. Maybe he’d won a contest, or something, to get first crack at him. Send in six new subscriptions and kill Purvis at our expense.
    I grabbed suddenly for the glasses and trained them on the doorway of the Cannon Motors showroom. A girl had stopped there, her hand on the knob. It wasn’t Mrs. Cannon, however. This was a blonde. She was wearing a blue dress and white shoes, carrying a white handbag with long straps. She seemed to be waiting for somebody to open the door for her. I swung the glasses the way she was looking and sucked in my breath sharply, but then let it ease out again in disappointment. The man coming along the walk was the right size, but his hair was longer and it was the color of cotton. He unlocked the door and they went in. I watched her trip across the floor of the